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ALL-STAR/THEIA

The ALL-STAR/THEIA (Agile Low-cost Laboratory for Space Technology Acceleration and Research / Telescopic High-definition Earth Imaging Apparatus) CubeSat is a mission to test a new CubeSat platform and an experimental imaging payload.

Students from the Colorado Space Grant Consortium (COSGC) have teamed with Lockheed Martin to develop a miniature satellite (3U CubeSat), known as ALL-STAR (Agile Low-cost Laboratory for Space Technology Acceleration and Research). The ALL-STAR program, designed to inspire and develop America’s future technological workforce, will provide students hands-on-experience in applying science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills to building operational space systems. The ALL-STAR concept is aimed at creating a small satellite bus with increased performance parameters.

THEIA is an optical remote sensing payload, compatible with the COSGC ALL-STAR bus, that will take images of Earth's surface in full color in order to verify all capabilities of the ALL-STAR bus on orbit, providing a marketable proof of concept. The THEIA instrument is being designed and developed by the THEIA team at the University of Colorado (UC) and at COSGC (Colorado Space Grant Consortium).

The THEIA imaging system is comprised of a refractor and a CMOS imaging sensor. The refractor chosen for this design is an achromatic doublet lens that measures 50.8 mm in diameter and has a 150 mm focal length. An achromatic doublet lens is composed of two lenses that made of two types of glass that are cemented together with optical-grade adhesive. Furthermore, the diameter and focal of the chosen refractor fits within the volume constraints, but utilizes of the majority of the allotted volume to achieve the required angular resolution and field of view.

The satellite was successfully deployed in orbit, but no signals were received. ALL-STAR/THEIA deorbited on 26 May 2014.